(1) Existing law authorizes a county board of education to establish and maintain one or more community schools and to enroll specified categories of pupils, including pupils expelled from a school district, among others. Existing law authorizes the governing board of any school district to maintain one or more alternative schools, as defined, and requires the governing board of each high school district and each unified school district to establish and maintain within its boundaries special continuation education classes.
Existing law requires enrollment in an alternative school to be voluntary, and authorizes both the voluntary and involuntary transfers of pupils to county community schools and to continuation schools, as specified.
This bill would require the State Department of Education to collect and publish on its DataQuest internet website, and school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to provide to the department, data on pupil transfers, disaggregated by those initiated by the pupil or their parent or guardian and those initiated by the local educational agency, to alternative schools, continuation schools or classes, or county community schools. The bill would require the department to systematically review suspension and expulsion data and that transfer data, and include reducing the use of those transfers in any guidance to local educational agencies relating to ending the disproportionate discipline of pupil subgroups, including African American pupils. To the extent this bill would impose additional duties on local educational agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
(2) Existing law prohibits a pupil from being suspended from school or recommended for expulsion, unless the superintendent of the school district or the principal of the school in which the pupil is enrolled determines that the pupil has committed an act from a list of specified acts.
Existing law requires school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to adopt local control and accountability plans using a state template adopted by the State Board of Education. Existing law requires the local control and accountability plan to include, among other things, a description of annual goals for all pupils and specified subgroups of pupils to be achieved for each state priority, as specified, including, among other state priorities, school climate, as measured by, among other things, suspension and expulsion rates.
This bill would require a school operated by a school district or county office of
education, or a charter school, to be considered persistently exclusionary if in each of 3 prior consecutive fiscal years the school’s unduplicated suspension rate, as reported by the department, is 20% or higher, or is 25% or higher for any of specified pupil subgroups.
(3) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.